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Friday, September 11, 2015

She Dreams

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: dreams, fall, it all turned out, fun, next step, and worth the wait. You can find them in bold within the story :) They were submitted by: http://www.eviljoyspeaks.wordpress.com

Just fair warning... it's, well, rather bleak.

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In her dreams she doesn’t fall.

In her dreams, it all turned out…differently. Life turned out differently, better, fun, fulfilling.

Her dreamscape is a parallel universe where her hike up the mountain that day was just that—a hike, exercise, an escape from the cluttered world of adulthood, bills, errands, and a job she didn’t love. It was an entirely different reality where she watched her next step at the end of that hike, kept her footing, and didn’t crash a few dozen feet into a ravine snapping her spinal cord in the process. There were no nightmarish hours hoarsely pleading for help, no pain, no fear laying in the dark unable to move wondering if something with sharp teeth would find her before humans could. She finished her hike and went home to get a nice long bath before starting another week at work. In that universe, she isn’t a tragedy.

Where she lives when she sleeps, there is no wheelchair, no need for constant care. She has a family there—a husband, Steven, she met on a hike who takes her dancing whenever she asks and 2 children (a boy and a girl named Ethan and Eliza) who always have her up and moving, running, playing, living. They live together in a 2 story house in the country, and she has a writing studio in the attic where she spends time everyday working on her 3rd bestseller.

Even with her busy writing schedule and the work she does around the house, she still manages to keep her hair the *perfect* shade of auburn and at the very least put on some lipstick and mascara everyday even if the lipstick is gone with the first of several cups of coffee. She takes the time to comb through Pinterest and pick out at least 1 craft for herself and 1 thing to do with the kids each week. She helps with homework, tends a garden, cooks made-from-scratch biscuits on the weekend that are better even than her grandmother’s. She jogs every day with the dog that, if she is completely honest, she said was for the kids when it was really more for herself once they got old enough to be in school. She likes the company during the day. Molly, a golden retriever, is quite the listener.

She likes to take long bubblebaths when she has writer’s block and enjoys a glass or two of wine when she’s had a breakthrough day. She loves to tie Steven’s ties in the morning. He knows how, but it’s just one of those things. A tradition. Sometimes she packs his lunch; sometimes he has lunch meetings. But no matter what the day holds, she makes sure to hold him tightly before he walks out the door because you never really know how a moment can change everything you ever thought life would be.

The world she actually lives in, this universe without parallels and wonderment, is mostly the opposite. She did fall off that cliff into the ravine. She did spend hours begging for help hoping beyond hope through the pain that someone would hear her, someone and not someTHING. She does have a wheelchair and does require constant care since she is paralyzed from the neck down. She gave up her career, lost her home, lives with her parents and needs someone to help with even the most demeaning, menial tasks.

There are no hikes, no kids, no Pinterest endeavors. She does have a Molly, but they never get to go on jogs together. Molly depends on everyone else to take her for walks and brush her gorgeous golden locks. She has migraines constantly and panic attacks in the night and more self-loathing than she thought any human could be capable of which pretty much means she will never meet someone who actually loves her enough to take on all the responsibility. She can’t even love herself.

She’s good at sleeping, though. That is one thing she has really been able to excel at in the last few years. Some days she never leaves the bed or, at least, never asks anyone to get her out of it. Even when sleep seems elusive on those nights when her head is throbbing, getting back to the life she thought she would live, the one that carries on day after day in perfect bliss inside her head, is well worth the wait.

About Me

I write, knit (sort of), love music, dance when no one is looking, snort when I laugh, talk about sex, consider myself a feminist, snore, sigh heavily when I see a bearded man, and make some badass desserts.